Boy, 11, Wounded When Gunshot Breaks Window On Near West Side

CHICAGO (CBS) — An 11-year-old boy was wounded early Thursday when gunshots shattered the window of his home on the city’s Near West Side.

Someone in a passing maroon minivan fired shots at a crowd of people standing in front of the St. Stephen’s Terrace apartment complex, on the 300 block of South Western Avenue near Jackson Boulevard, around 2 a.m., police said.

Some of the rounds went through the window of a first-floor apartment where an 11-year-old boy, his mother and other children were sleeping, police said.

The boy was cut as glass went flying from the shattered window, police said. Police originally believed he had suffered a graze wound from a bullet.

The boy was treated on the scene. No one else was injured in the shooting, police said.

St. Stephen’s Terrace is a low-income housing complex composed of mid-rise towers and townhomes.

The managers of the complex were taken to Housing Court three years ago, after residents complained that the electricity did not work properly, mice and cockroaches infested the apartments, and gang members sold drugs inside the buildings, and people were setting fire to garbage in clogged chutes, the Chicago Journal reported at the time. One of the garbage chute fires spread to damage one of the buildings in February 2009, the publication reported.

Police are searching for a maroon minivan with temporary tags in connection with the shooting.